Or to put it another way, there's failure, then there's ethical failure, and the latter absolutely deserves all the excuses in the world to not want to court it. (But then what about if someone says "you're then making too many excuses" ... and it is precisely that failure mode that I get myself tied in knots about in many cases with things like, say, why it took so long for me to even begin to get into political "organizing" - I didn't wanna break personal boundaries in making relationships around sensitive topics due to a dearth of social skill and knowledge of how to navigate the innuendo-laden social world.)